How online gaming is becoming a soft target for fraudsters

by Simon Kelman

The online gaming industry is in its infancy but is an industry that is worth millions of pounds, so it isn't that surprising to learn that online gaming is an emerging sector that is being targeted by fraudsters.

In 2011, Sony saw an attack compromise 77 million of its gamers details, in the same year Xbox live players fell victim to an email-based 'phishing' scam, which led users into revealing details of their gamer profiles, including bank account information. More recently in 2015, hackers managed to steal personal information including email addresses, passwords and IP addresses from many PlayStation and Xbox gamers.

As the number of online gamers continues to increase, so does the need for greater protection and controls, the vast majority of modern gaming sites require highly sensitive personal information for both registration and use.

To prevent fraud and protect players, gaming sites need to ensure they are using identity verification services whilst at the same time as minimising the inconvenience to the player and avoiding a decline in player onboarding.

With HooYu players can quickly and securely identify themselves using both traditional ID verification and social media identification, all without any complex procedures or significant lag-time enabling them to get immersed into a game with other players they can trust.

Instead of having to e-mail sensitive documents, which would then have to be verified by eye, players can upload all of their document verification details through one portal and have it expertly verified by HooYu without an of the risk of sharing sensitive documentation to game operators.

Online games can be a wealth of financial and sensitive information, even before you factor in the value of some of the assets within the game itself. Whilst the level of security and verification within the gaming industry is low, criminals are going to see it as a soft target and gamers will become the target illicit activity.